Horticultural Highlights

Hopefully this won't have driven loads of people thinking they'd find links or tips on legal equivalents to mind altering hallucinogenics.
It is rather to recommend the West London home of Capel Manor college which is situated in Gunnersbury Park at the Ealing and Hounslow borders.
Last week was pretty much a full stop on my connection as I attended the awards ceremony held at Trailfinders in West Ealing. Trailfinders is a great venue (we saw the fireworks display here this year) and food that was provided was very good too.

Sadly only3 of the class of 2008/9 BTEC certificate were there but also in attendance were lecturers and other students which made for a great evening. If you get a chance to do a course there do take it up, it's a fantastic place with marvelous people and gardening is a great thing to do.

Well done Ed on your Prize and Gerry thanks for making sure we recognized our year teachers efforts.

The birth of RADAR - career highlights

During the week I went to an IET London presentation on how RADAR started, there were a few reasons why I decided to attend, one being that my post degree employ,ment pretty much started off in RADAR (Marconi's in Chelmsford) also that my father had been employed in Radar and had been involved in its early days during WWII.

Now to be frank I didn't really learn too much from the lecture given by a guy in his 90's (Laurence Tandy)but he was impressive in his memory and his energy.

What the talk did remind me of was that many of us have a 'golden age' in our careers when we're in tune with what's happening and that this is a time we can re-live but probably not recreate, I feel fortunate in that, looking back I have more than one, and perhaps even more to come!
( I even had to look up what RADAR stood for - it's RAdio Detection And Ranging)

What we don't see on TV

Although there are a lot of TV channels available to UK viewers there are a number of programmes that we don't see or that get less coverage than they should.

TV's Prix Europa is a showcase for some of the best TV and this week I went to a London RTS presentation that gave excerpts from some of the prime material.

The content was varied including German women footballers playing their Iranian counterparts (Football under cover) , a Rabbit's eye view on the wall between East and West Germany.

What was most surprising was the programme that raised questions over coverage of African famines.
The famine scam has not had the coverage it war ants and the issue of BBC editorial control is central to the exposé although I'm sure other broadcasters are guilty of similar practice the BBC does not come out odf the story well.
You can find out more and view here

Ministers concern over threat that Tories pose to BBC

I suppose I’m getting to the stage in my life where I might be considered cynical certainly when the subject of politicians comes up but I must say I thought Ben Bradshaw MP and Minister of State with respect to the DCMS gave a pretty good performance in front of the VOLaV last week.


Brasdshaw made clear that he thought the BBC was far safer with Labour in power than with what appears to be the likely outcome of next years Elections – answering questions he also made no bone about his backing of product placement on UK tv.

I fear the minister is right about the threat to the BBC that a Murdoch backed Tory government may pose but am less sanguine over the advance of product placement than the Exeter MP.